The Book of Ancient Bastards (27 page)

Brood Mare to the Devil’s Brood

( A.D. 1122–1204)

I advise you, King, to beware your wife and sons.
—Count Raymond of Toulouse to King Henry II of England

Every inch a match for her formidable husband, Henry II of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine not only bore him eight children (including both the famous Richard the Lion-Hearted, and the scurrilous John of England), she also outlived him by more than fifteen years, the same number of years in which he held her a virtual prisoner in Windsor Castle after she supported his sons in their rebellion against him in A.D. 1173.The fact that Eleanor outlived her husband by so many years is rendered all the more remarkable by the revelation that she was in fact twelve years older than her famous husband and had already borne two children by her first marriage.

Too much woman for her first husband, Louis VII of France, Eleanor found her match at age thirty in eighteen-year-old Henry Fitzempress, at the time duke of Normandy (and soon afterward king of England). Whether or not this second marriage was a love match, there can be no question that the couple shared a whole lot of passion. The two had eight children, seven of whom survived into adulthood, the so-called “Devil’s Brood.”

Not above using her children to play politics, Eleanor was an independent landowner (Aquitaine and Poitou) who acted like one, and constantly played her quarrelsome sons off against each other and against their own father. Tossed into prison at Windsor Castle after supporting her sons in their uprising against her husband, Eleanor waited Henry out: outliving him and seeing her favorite child (Richard) crowned king in his succession after Henry’s death in A.D. 1189. She had been a prisoner for fifteen years at that point.

Living well into the reign of her last son John, Eleanor never really stopped doing her best to influence court politics, and never really retired from public life. Still feisty into her seventies, she personally ruled Aquitaine and Poitou as her personal fiefs until shortly before her death in A.D. 1204.

Bastard on Crusade

Originally married to King Louis VII of France, Eleanor accompanied him when he went to the Holy Land on crusade in A.D. 1146. While there she supposedly went a little wild. A later chronicler dutifully said of her purported antics: “Some say King Lewis [sic] carried her into the Holy Land, where she carried herself not very holily, but led a licentious life; and, which is the worst kind of licentiousness, in carnal familiarity with a Turk.”

Was this true? Probably not. Such behavior on the part of any medieval French noblewoman would likely have resulted in her either being killed outright or divorced, stripped of her titles and property, and slapped into a convent for her troubles. That said, the royal couple squabbled constantly, with the result that they left the Holy Land and returned home by separate routes, and agreed to annul their marriage soon afterward.

Who Wants to Rule When There’s
Jousting to Be Done?

( A.D. 1155–1183)

Henry the son of the king of England, leaving the kingdom, passed three years in French contests and lavish expenditure.
—Medieval chronicler Ralph of Diceto, archdeacon of Middlesex

The subject of many troubadour songs idealizing the shining young knight in the golden age of chivalry, Henry the Young King, second son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was tall, handsome, charismatic, an enthusiastic jouster, and generous to his followers. Raised up to be “junior king” to his father at the age of fifteen (a symbolic gesture intended to secure his succession), Henry the Young King was everything the troubadours sang of him and more: stupid, shallow, vain, profligate, and utterly unsuited to run a tennis tournament, let alone a kingdom.

For all of his enthusiasm for jousting, Henry wasn’t really any good at that, either. His mediocrity in the lists was directly related to his short attention span and inability to focus on anything long enough to master it. Even having the most famous knight in Christendom assigned to mentor him did no good. Sir William Marshall, who went on to serve as regent for King John’s son Henry III, was a young knight of enormous repute whom Henry II set to teach his son how to fight in tournaments. Henry the Young King grew bored, though, never practiced, and wasn’t interested in the hard work associated with mastering the arts of war.

In A.D. 1173, Henry joined his brothers (Richard, Geoffrey, and John) in rising in open revolt against their father. In this they were backed by their mother, the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, who found herself under house arrest for the rest of her husband’s life for her trouble. At first it looked as if Henry was going to have to give away his kingdom piecemeal to his restive sons, but he had the money and the will to use it to pay mercenaries to fight in his name, and after a short time he prevailed.

Bastard Shown Up By a Marshall

Flanders (modern Belgium) during the late twelfth century was a hotbed of jousting tournaments, and Henry the Young King frequently deserted his duties as duke of neighboring Normandy to slip over to Flanders and enter a tournament or two. One particular time Henry and his entire retinue (including the by-then famous Sir William Marshall) stayed in a certain Flemish town where the king ran up enormous debts without having the money with him to make good. When the townspeople heard this, they locked their gates and guarded their town walls, determined not to allow the Young King to leave until he’d settled his accounts with them. His promises were not heeded. Apparently Henry the Young King was as free with his word as he was with other people’s money. In stepped William Marshall, who offered his own word, vouching for the repayment of the Young King’s debts. That was enough to satisfy the Flemings, who allowed the mortified Young King and his party to leave immediately.

By A.D. 1183, the Young King had still learned nothing about the right and wrong way to get what you want. Constantly demanding more authority from his father, he never demonstrated the slightest interest in showing the accountability and work ethic to go with it. Henry turned on his brother Richard, and invaded his duchy of Aquitaine. Instead of taking Richard by surprise, Henry took a beating, having his mercenaries defeated in battle and coming down with dysentery himself shortly after looting a monastery in order to be able to pay his men. Quickly realizing he was dying, Henry sent word for his father to come to his deathbed to exchange forgiveness with him, as was accepted Christian practice.

Henry II stayed away, afraid of a trap.

Kinda says it all, doesn’t it?

A Talent for War

( A.D. 1157–1199)

[Richard] cared for no success that was not reached by a path cut by his own sword and stained with the blood of his adversaries.
—Medieval chronicler Gerald of Wales, archdeacon of Brecon

The foremost example of what French troubadours called “le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche” (“the knight without fear and above reproach”), Richard Plantagenet, third son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, has gotten a bad rap from recent historians looking to balance the portrait of him painted by contemporary chroniclers and expanded upon in the millennium since his death. But there is no changing the fact that Richard was the greatest strategist and one of the most fearless warriors of the Middle Ages, while also being eminently more honorable and trustworthy than any of his brothers, his father, mother, or other royal contemporaries.

His mother’s favorite, Richard spent barely a year total in England during his ten-year reign. And yet he was remembered as “good king Richard,” because he was a hell of a lot better ruler than anyone else looking to fill the job.

That said, he really loved war. And when the situation called for it, he could be the most ruthless of bastards, as evidenced by his slaughter of thousands of captives at one fell stroke during a siege in the Holy Land.

Having recently taken the city of Acre in the Holy Land, Richard found himself in a ticklish situation in late summer of A.D. 1191. While negotiating with the great Arab leader Saladin for surrender of various lands surrounding the city in exchange for the release of Muslim soldiers who had made up the garrison at Acre, the English king managed to alienate several allies, including his old rival King Philip Augustus of France and Archduke Leopold V of Austria (who later famously took revenge on Richard by holding him hostage for a huge ransom). Now facing an Arab army alone and eager to move his troops south to link up with other crusader forces in and around Jerusalem, Richard was growing impatient over the negotiations, while Saladin, hoping to neutralize Richard for the remainder of the campaign season, clearly dragged his feet.

Gay Bastard?

Everyone who has seen the play or the film
The Lion in Winter
knows of the rumors of Richard’s homosexuality: not much expressed interest in women, married only after becoming king, and never produced an heir, the medieval equivalent of the guy who’s a jock in part because he likes to hang out with guys just a little too much. But modern scholarship has pretty much put the lie to this tale, especially in light of the fact that a supposed secret such as this one would have spread like wildfire among such gossipy medieval chroniclers as the monk Gerald of Wales had even a hint of it gotten out. In reality, Richard’s wife Berengaria was likely barren, where Richard himself produced at least one verifiable bastard (later lord of Cognac) and rumors of another named Fulk.

In a move that modern readers find astonishing but which barely raised an eyebrow at the time, Richard marched all 2,700 members of the captured garrison of Acre outside the city gates and had them butchered by his troops in front of the eyes of the horrified Saladin and his soldiers. No longer tied by the need to guard his prisoners, Richard moved south and attacked Saladin’s troops again at the battle of Arsuf a month later. He followed up this success by seeing his own nephew crowned king of Jerusalem.

While massacres of the type described above were fairly commonplace (Saladin had killed many more prisoners taken in the Arab victory over the crusaders at Hattin years earlier), the massacre at Acre has come down through history as a stain on the reputation of Richard the Lion-Hearted. People like their heroes to be clean morally, uncompromised, and decidedly unbastardly.